Diminutive dining hot spot leaves SoFi in need of more space, shacking up at The Shelborne's restaurant, Vesper Brasserie

Now here's an interesting transformation. The Dining Room, a locals and critical fave in South Beach's SoFi 'hood is moving out and becoming a full time pop-up restaurant through the end of next season. Says The Dining Room's Maria Lieberman, whose husband Zack and brother-in-law Brian are the restaurant's owners, "After the overwhelming amount of patrons flooding our tiny little space, we realized it was time to move on to a larger venue." The new space not only has more room, but a full liquor bar and, says Liberman, the opportunity to "hopefully never having to turn away a customer due to our size."

The move to Shelborne isn't as strange as some may think. Shelborne South Beach owner Keith Menin and The Dining Room's co-owner Brian Lieberman, are BFFs. Brian Lieberman, incidentally,also own Ola, where The Dining Room's executive chef Horacio Rivadero splits his time at Menin's other hotel, The Sanctuary. All the same menu items will be at the newly named The Dining Room at Vesper along with an exctended wine list.

The restaurant's first day as a pop-up is Wednesday, August 1. Among the dishes on the restaurant's Miami Spice menu: shrimp ceviche with citrus-tomato water, scallions, red onion, cilantro and lime popcorn and lamb Milanese wiuth baby arugula, pine nuts, roasted beets and lemon goat cheese vinaigrette.

As for why the restaurant is calling itself a pop-up when it's seemingly taking over a space permanently, Lieberman tells us it's no oxymoron and that, "It's not permanent ....yet ! It will be a pop up through the end of season and then Brian and Keith will sit down and reevaluate."

The Dining Room Pop-Up at Vesper Brasserie will be open Tuesday- Saturday from 6pm-midnight.